University of Miami Evaluation Report of $100 million South Florida Annenberg
Challenge Initiative Released
The South Florida Annenberg Challenge—Legacy and Continuing Impact
The independent Evaluation of the South Florida Annenberg Challenge
identified a positive “Annenberg effect.” To improve education
and raise student achievement, the report found that:
Leadership is the key. Partnership is the catalyst.
Leadership, the Council’s focus, is the vehicle for improving
student performance according to the Report. Other findings and legacies from
the Report:
Leadership:
- identified the critical importance of principal leadership to increase student
achievement
- implemented successful and ongoing programs to develop, empower and support
Principal Leadership
- created the Council to turn proven theory into successful Leadership programs
- linked theory, policy and programs and diverse stakeholders to support Principal
Leadership
Public/Private Partnerships:
- formed the most successful and comprehensive educational partnership initiative
in Florida’s history
- used partnerships as the catalyst and advocacy for improvement
- documented the components of successful partnering for future use
- demonstrated that partnerships are cost-effective and yield an achievement
“return on investment”
Lessons Learned…A Knowledge-Based Legacy
Among the findings from the South Florida Annenberg Challenge:
- Principals are the catalysts and facilitators of change. An empowered principal
links vision and the reality. Reform flourishes under an empowered principal who
shares decision-making, advocates for their school, and develops partnerships.
- School environment is closely correlated to high test scores. Principals
must create an environment that supports academic success and helps all stakeholders
to understand and support change.
- Districts and school leaders statewide can work as a unified force for improvement.
Establishing collective participation at any level is an accomplishment. The Challenge
elevated partnership development and captured the successful methods.
- When business, community, and higher education representatives devote time
and expertise to school reform efforts, student achievement improves. Their onsite
presence and advocacy validates the importance of the partnership.
- Teachers working in diverse urban classrooms need intensive and individual
professional development for school-wide initiatives to take root. They must be
able to apply this training to improving student academic performance.
- Innovation must be directly tied to student achievement goals and supported
with resources at the school site.
- Parental involvement activities must be personally meaningful and rewarding
to attract participation. Parental involvement increased in schools that had deliberate
involvement strategies such as a parent coordinator, technology training, parenting
skills workshops, and engagement of parents in genuine and welcoming ways.
- Partnerships are cost-effective, and yield a “return on investment”
in enhancing student achievement. Findings indicate that the cost per student
of implementing an entire project ($73) was about the cost of a few hours of private
tutoring.
- When Principals had discretion, flexible school funding contributed greatly
to the success of innovative programs.
- No excuses: Whatever the challenges, all schools including those with high-need
populations, can make significant achievement progress when given proper resources
and leadership.
-Above results from the University of Miami Evaluation Report,
January 2004
The South Florida Annenberg Challenge:
A Solid Foundation for Continuing Educational Reform
As one of the nation’s largest educational reform initiatives,
the South Florida Annenberg Challenge (SFAC) successfully identified new approaches
to improving the state’s schools, and created effective programs to nurture
student achievement. Findings from the program evaluation indicate a two-fold
legacy of SFAC:
Leadership is the key. Partnership is the catalyst.
Today, the successor organization, the Council for Educational
Change (CEC) — with strong support from public and private sources —
is building on the SFAC’s accomplishments and making positive difference
in the lives of students in Florida and throughout the country. School leadership
was chosen as the mission focus for CEC. To support this mission, the Council
develops programs and tools to improve school leadership.
Background
Since 1993, the Annenberg Foundation has awarded $500 million
to educational reform efforts in the form of challenge grants characterized by
partnerships among businesses, communities, and educators in local settings. While
most were targeted toward specific goals, such as smaller class size or teacher
professional development, the SFAC, funded from January 1997 until December 2002,
took a different approach in the tri-county South Florida region.
With one of the nation’s most diverse and highly mobile
student populations, the SFAC took a “grass-roots approach” to sowing
the seeds for educational reform in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties.
By creating collaborative partnerships between businesses, schools, and communities,
the SFAC sought to meet the challenge of improving student achievement in schools
that needed the greatest help.
To support the SFAC, the business and community sectors together
raised $66,000,000, for a total of $100,000,000 to fund these partnerships. The
$33 million raised by the private sector was the largest amount of money ever
donated to a K-12 educational initiative in state history, attesting to the community’s
willingness to reform education through nontraditional venues.
These funds allowed the SFAC to operate 102 partnerships in 385
schools, impacting 265,000 students, 15,000 teachers, 2,500 school leaders, and
200 educational leaders. Partnerships focused on children who were potentially
at risk for low academic achievement or school failure and who lived in some of
the poorest neighborhoods of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach Counties. Many
of these students were eligible to receive free or reduced lunch, were students
of color, and/or were English language learners. While the SFAC funding concluded
in December 2002, some partnerships extended their activities and continue to
the present.
In January 2000, working with the Collins Center for Public Policy,
the SFAC identified three areas for future concentration: (1) principal empowerment,
(2) teacher development and leadership, and (3) community and parent involvement,
and refocused its vision:
Long lasting change is only possible as parents, businesses,
and communities work together to shape public policy that sustains the reforms
long after the South Florida Annenberg Challenge itself is gone. The vision is
focused through principal leadership, skilled teachers, and parent and community
involvement.
Boosting Student Achievement
Working with an evaluation team from the University of Miami,
the SFAC collected and analyzed five years of academic data with a focus on Florida
Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) scores for mathematics, reading, and writing,
and the state’s accountability system of school grades according to the
Florida A+ Plan.
SFAC schools outpaced comparison clusters of schools with statistically
significant gains on combined FCAT reading, math, and writing test scores. In
addition, the SFAC projects were more cost effective than comparison clusters
of schools. Overall, SFAC schools consistently started with lower FCAT scores
than the state average in 1999 and ended with lower FCAT scores in 2003. While
both Florida schools and SFAC schools showed positive trends from 1999 to 2003,
SFAC schools tended to outpace state-level gains, particularly at the elementary
level.
SFAC schools showed improvements in school grades. From 1999 to
2003, the percentage of SFAC schools receiving an “A” increased: 4%
of SFAC schools received A’s in 1999, 10% in 2000, 17% in 2001, 25% in 2002,
and 26% in 2003. Similarly, fewer and fewer SFAC schools received grades below
“C”: 54% of SFAC schools got a grade below “C” in 1999,
42% in 2000, 33% in 2001, 19% in 2002, and 18% in 2003. The percentage of SFAC
schools receiving an “F” also decreased: 8% ‘F’ schools
in 1999, <1% ‘F’ school in 2000, 0% ‘F’ school in 2001,
5% in 2002, and 4% in 2003.
Lessons Learned…A Knowledge-Based Legacy
The SFAC partnerships provided schools, school districts, and
the State of Florida with clear lessons regarding educational reform. Among the
findings:
- School principals are the catalysts and facilitators of school change. An
empowered principal is the link between the vision and the reality. School reform
flourishes under an empowered principal who shares decision-making with parents,
teachers, and other stakeholders. For change to take place, principals must serve
as advocates for their schools and focus on developing community and business
partnerships.
- The environment of the school is closely correlated to high test scores. In
order to create an environment that supports academic success, all stakeholders
(administrators, teachers, parents, students, and business partners) must understand
and support change.
- It is possible to join districts and school leaders statewide to work as a
unified force and voice for education improvement. Establishment of collective
participation, whether at an individual school or multi-school level, is an accomplishment
in and of itself. The SFAC has created a legacy by not only forming partnerships,
but also documenting the components of successful partnerships for the future.
- When business, community, and university personnel – not just their
money and resources – are directly involved in school reform efforts, student
achievement improves. The physical presence and support of someone from the outside
helps to validate the importance of the work of schooling.
- Teachers working in diverse urban classrooms need intensive and individual
professional development for school-wide initiatives to take root. In addition,
they need to understand how these professional development efforts link to student
achievement.
- Innovation must be directly tied to student achievement goals and supported
with resources. For educational innovations to be implemented, teachers need to
understand and be committed to the innovation. They also need the equipment, materials,
and support to successfully implement the innovation.
- When parent involvement is personally meaningful and rewarding, it is more
likely to happen. All schools struggle to attract parents to the campus. However,
parent involvement increased in schools that made intentional and deliberate efforts
to attract parents, had a parent coordinator whose job it was to focus on parent
involvement, provided parents with opportunities to have personal benefits (e.g.,
technology training, parenting skills), and involved parents in the life of the
school in genuine and welcoming ways.
- School/business partnerships are not only cost-effective, but also yield a
“return on investment” in enhancing student achievement. Evaluation
findings indicated that the SFAC and business combined contribution per student
per year of implementing a project ($73), was about the cost of a few hours of
private tutoring.
- When principals are empowered to exercise fiscal discretion, flexibility in
funding at the school level contributes to the success of innovative programs.
- The bottom line: Whatever the challenges, all schools, including those with
high-need populations, can make significant progress toward improving student
achievement when given appropriate resources and leadership.
The Council for Educational Change…The Future
With seed money from the Annenberg Foundation and a secure endowment,
the statewide, non-profit Council for Educational Change (CEC) is using the lessons
and best practices identified by the SFAC to create long-lasting educational reform.
The mission of the CEC is “to emphasize effective, empowered leadership
as the primary strategy to improve student performance.”
The SFAC legacy continues in the following CEC programs:
The Florida Leadership Academy. The Academy offers both
aspiring and currently employed principals a comprehensive approach to improving
their schools. The curriculum is drawn from nationally recognized business, university,
and military models and is designed for school-site implementation. The Academy’s
strong design – a week-long Summer Institute packed with speakers, technical
training, and networking, with follow-up sessions and personal mentoring –
provides increased knowledge, refined skills, and on-going support for the often
daunting work of school improvement. Participants’ assessments of this professional
development experience attest to the likelihood of far-reaching, permanent benefits
to Florida’s schools.
The Principal Portal. (www.principalportal.net).
Provides administrators with easy access to information, school policies, rules,
and regulations in a searchable web portal.
Professional Developmental Initiative (PDI). (www.principalportal.net).
An innovative online resource that provides a compendium of instantly accessible
information to help principals manage their schools and troubleshoot problems
efficiently through the principal portal.
Accelerated School Administrator Program (ASAP). (www.asapportal.com).
Using original competency-based materials aligned with district and state expectations
for educational leaders, ASAP offers individualized on-line learning to prepare
quality leaders for 21st century schools.
Partners to Advance School Success (PASS). The PASS model
teams a business CEO, educational coach, and principal of a low performing school,
to infuse business strategies into school improvement efforts. Since its launch
with seven partnerships in December 1999, PASS has expanded to 26 partnerships
statewide and received a $1million appropriation from the Florida Legislature.
Florida School Report. (www.floridaschoolreport.org).
This online statewide school performance tool can be used by parents, educators,
and policy makers. It posts longitudinal school comparison data on individual
subject areas and school performance on the FCAT.
SnapShot™. This is an online tool (www.spsnapshot.com)
that presents FCAT and other standardized test score data for individual students
and groups of students. SnapShot is an invaluable tool for school leaders’
data-driven decision-making.
Public Policy. The CEC advocates for systemic education
change at the local, state, and national levels. These changes will be based on
data, results, and accountability. For instance, a partnership with national leadership
organizations was developed as a first step in exploring national principal certification.
Final Comments
By focusing on program success, best practices, and lessons learned,
the CEC is poised to become a national leader in identifying, training, and supporting
school leaders. The legacy of SFAC is two-fold:
- Leadership is the key. SFAC has identified the importance of principals
as facilitators of school change and has developed resources to empower principals
as instructional leaders focused on student achievement. A lasting legacy of the
SFAC involves its successor organization, the Council for Educational Change (CEC).
Based on the lessons learned from the “sprinkling of seeds” approach
to support a wide range of initiatives in the SFAC, the CEC focuses its efforts
on programs that directly link educational policies with student achievement.
The key for the link between policy and student achievement is a school principal
who translates the vision of school improvement and quality of education for all
students. The CEC is currently working in collaboration with the Florida Department
of Education to enact statewide standards for principals and on continuing the
spectrum of principal professional development experiences and resources.
- Partnership is the catalyst. SFAC has created a legacy not only by
serving as a catalyst to form partnerships, but also by documenting the components
of successful partnerships for the future. The result has been a successful and
comprehensive partnership unprecedented in the history of South Florida. Moreover,
school reform initiatives have demonstrated that school and business partnerships
can be cost-effective and yield a “return on investment” in enhancing
student achievement.
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